Travel photos and journals from across Asia [1997-2025]
A free hotel shuttle took us into Vang Vieng the next morning and I knew I’d miss the Sanctuary as soon as we hit tourist central an hour later. Our accommodation in Vang Vieng was a riverside resort called Simon. Again the permanent miasma partially obscured what would have otherwise been an epic view but…
It was time to get out of the city and head north but before we got to Vang Vieng we decided to splash out and have a couple of nights on the largest lake in Laos at the Sanctuary Resort at Tha Heua. The three hour minivan ride was taken at typical Asian breakneck speed…
It had been around twenty years since I had ventured into Laos. Road trip season was upon us again and now seemed a good time as any to revisit the country and explore some new spots. Getting there was relatively easy with an early flight from Chumphon to Don Meuang, Bangkok and a midday one…
I’d never been to a MotoGP race before but have been following the sport for years. Thought I’d finally book it up and go before Valentino Rossi retires, which can’t be long now, I’d also promised the kids I would take them. Booked the grandstand tickets through the official motogp.com website back in June, they…
Soon it was time to get on the road again and into our next province. I wanted to head into the relatively unexplored Satun province but democracy overruled me and the majority voted for Krabi since half of our party had never been there. Krabi The first thing you notice when travelling from a non-touristy…
Following a summer in the UK I was itching to get back on the road in Asia and sniff out some of those undiscovered spots in southern Thailand once again. This was to be a family trip, however, with a group of eight in total with differing agendas, so I had to go with the…
Four pals who met in the late nineties in Hua Hin decided to have a reunion in Scotland this summer. It was a ten hour drive north in Jonny’s silver bat-mobile to a wee village called Laurencekirk halfway between Dundee and Aberdeen. Our base for the next week was a stone cottage on a little…
Our trip was nearing its end so we had to head back south, breaking the journey in Kanchanaburi and Ratchaburi on the way. Our accommodation in K-town, the R.S. Hotel, was a standard business type affair but the kids wanted a pool. I was starting to get an ear infection from swimming in brown rivers!…
Heading north from Sai Yok Yai our destination for the night was Sangkhlaburi, a small Burmese-Thai settlement on the northern tip of the Vajiralongkorn reservoir. The road twisted and turned offering spectacular vistas of the lake around every corner. We were staying on a raft close to the famous wooden Mon bridge that is the…
Following an extended stint in the UK it was time for another Asian road trip, I had missed them. We were heading north, past Kanchanaburi and on towards Sai Yok Yai, a National Park on the River Kwae in the western reaches of Thailand. The drive was a long one, seven hours in total from Bangsaphan,…
Our trip had reached its most northerly point so it was time to head back south towards the coast once more. After some horsing around with good friends in Oxfordshire we crammed once again into the Silver Citroen Shed that had been our reliable wheels for the whole trip and made the long drive south. Cornwall…
Another foray into the Peak District took us to Stanage Edge, a gritstone escarpment near the village of Hathersage and mecca for local climbers. Wondering why the car park was empty, we headed through the Stanage Plantation and up to the rock face to be greeted with some house sized boulders and a climb to…
It was time to get out into the wilderness and take some hikes across the rolling hills of the Peak District. Just 20 miles from Manchester central the sprawling uplands offer an opportunity to get back to nature and take in some stunning vistas across farmlands, moors, villages and outcrops. This particular walk took us…
Just 7 miles from Folkestone, Dover has plenty to see for those on the tourist trail. Walking across the top of the white cliffs is something I’d always wanted to do, the hike to the lighthouse took about an hour and offered some spectacular vantage points on the cliff edge. A second trip to Dover…
It was time to get back down to the coast to Folkestone where we would be based for a couple of weeks. We spent the time exploring the town, and taking a trip on the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway which ended up in a bleak and windswept Dungeness; it satisfied the inner trainspotter in…